In our IWBUMS branch we continue to update and improve the current testing build, while we wait to see what other goodies might drop in. As of last Tuesday we’re currently on Build 34.13, while amongst other fixes and tweaks the next build will increase your day length from 45 minutes to an hour in an experiment to see how it impacts on player productivity and, perhaps, to cater for the amount of different systems that are now in the game compared to how the game was originally. Let us know what you think when .14 hits.

In terms of other stuff…

METALWORKING

Metalworking will come for build 34, in 2 separated skills, smelting and metalworking. Smelting will be used to melt metal into ingot in a stone furnace, stone furnace require to be build from stones (recipe needed!) and will run on coal or charcoal.

From there, just light up your stone furnace and put metal items such as spoon, fork, empty tin can/pop can, etc.. Wait and you have a metal ingot! Which leads to our next skill, metalworking.

First thing you’ll need to craft is an anvil (again, recipe locked, so either you find the correct magazine or you start as a metal worker or the blacksmith trait!) From there, you can start crafting useful metal items like nails, spoon and fork again.. To do this, you need a hammer, but high-end smithing will need ball peen hammer and tongs, which can be crafted as well.

Later on, the smith will be able to craft hammer, metal barricades (way more strong than the planks one, but also require a blowtorch to be put on windows/doors) and even metal furniture like fences, locker, crate, shelves… but no sword smithing for now as it’ll require new animations and it’ll be way more difficult to do anyway!

Metalworking is currently in internal testing and it goes well, it should be in IWBUMS branch rather soon!

ANIMATION COMPATIBILITY / PERFORMANCE

Since we released the video on the animations last week, we’ve had a lot of excited people, but also a fair few low spec PC owners worried about the impact it will have on their system.

We’ve done a lot of work in optimization on the 3D models and animation system over the past year for the animation overhaul, the requirement for shaders has been completely axed, as has the requirement for FBOs to draw the 3D characters on. This means the minimum requirement to run the 3D models has dropped dramatically. There have also been significant optimizations made during development, so while the addition of the advanced animation system will have an impact on performance, we hope it will be a negligible one or even improve matters for some, and will allow most if not all people who currently cannot run the models to play with them in the animation build.

It’s honestly still too early to know for sure with performance, but as we’ve always said we’ll always take all steps we can to avoid cutting people out at the bottom end with incompatibilities. At the same time we have a responsibility to make the game as good as we can so if performance slips a few FPS and we can’t avoid it then that’s the way it has to be. Sadly those at the bottom are those hit hardest by any performance losses. All this said, we’ve had the game working at a solid 30fps on a 1.8Ghz Duo Intel HD laptop, Six Months Later, with all zombies and player using the new animations. Results have varied on other systems though, and the whole system isn’t in yet (let alone future additions to the game) but just so you know we’re on the case and take it seriously.

OTHER STUFF

Co-op fixes continue apace! (With one being quashed during the writing of this very Mondoid!) It’s still unclear how much more testing and fixes will be needed to make sure it works for all the testers router configurations, but we hope to have a wider test as soon as that time comes. We know co-op is tremendously exciting to a lot of people out there so we’re very excited to get it out there!

Also the release of Turbo’s WordZed 2.0 community translation and Radio/TV broadcast is starting to loom large. Turbo has a habit of going a bit quiet and then having a ‘tada!’ moment when his work is complete, and this week’s was probably his best ‘tada!’ yet. It’s a lovely little tool, and we hope to have a version in testing and with some of our community translators for feedback as soon as is possible.

This week’s Featured Image from Yuragon, from the tiny non-crowded hamlet known as Steam. The Centralized Block of Italicised Text would like to point earnestly in the general direction of the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something, and the PZ Mailing List that can send blogs like this and patch notes direct to your mailbox. We also live on Twitter here!